COM1FERCE OF THE EXPOSITION.
"Timm is something in the way of a murmur afloat, that the London shopkeepers find their shops comparatively deserted—that other exhibitions and sights are unattended—that money is not circulating among the tradesmen of what is called the West-end "; and that allegation the Morning Chronicle endeavours to disprove. Our able contemporary does so in part, by a sort of a priori process: visitors, he says, spend money ; the gross receipts of railway traffic for the week ending June 14 were 292,190/. on 6140 miles of line, which gives an average of 471. 108. per mile ; and in the following week the traffic had risen to 306,0731. or 50/. per mile—the London and North-western have taken last week 1300/. more than the corresponding week last year, the Great Northern 90001., the Lancashire and Yorkshire 8000/., the Great Western 3500/., the South-eastern 46001., the Eastern Counties 6001.; the mass of visitors indicated by these returns do not abstain from spending ; every master of a house knows that his expenditure is increased, in furniture, house-painting, holyday clothes for his family, and carriage-money ; hence inevitably increased revenue to inn-keepers and lodginghouse-keepers, cab and omnibus pro- prietors, butchers and bakers, haberdashers, booksellers, and china- men. Such is the argument, and there is some truth in it : but it does not dispose of the rumour in question. There can be no doubt as to the obvious fact that the purveyors of the holyday concourse are deriving considerable sums from the traffic immediately attendant on the Exposition. This advantage was foreseen ; and there is almost as little doubt that, in the des- perate drive of trading activity, that advantage has been to a great extent anticipated—" discounted." It is not less certain, and we have the proof in unmistakeable signs, that the competi- tion to secure that advantage overreached itself and was cart ied to excess, There has been enormous overtrading in the preparations for this very traffic ; and it may be said with tolerable certainty, that the extraordinary burst of prosperity created by the Exposi- tion is attended by an all but contemporaneous mass of bankruptcy.
Some of the trades which are complaining most distinctly are those which must always depend on the systematic rotation of commercial seasons. If the manufacturers of cotton goods, mils- fins, and summer wares, have derived any advantage from the Exposition, they did so when they were preparing for the Spring market ; the Exposition will do nothing for them in "the Fall," it is doing nothing for them now. Even the London tailors are feeling the work slacken, and the Exposition presents no reason to gainsay their foreboding for the autumn. Country tradesmen de- clare that the "nobility, gentry, and public in general," who have any dealings with provincial shopkeepers, have been saving to meet the expense of the trip to London ; and that they will again save when they return, to meet the unanticipated excess of outlay. We know too many instances of such a process to doubt that it is really at work. Country tradesmen generally, therefore, and those trades that depend more upon the "long run" in commercial transactions than upon sudden demands, find their condition in- fluenced far less by the transient stimulus of the Exposition than by the gencral condition and course of the country. The stimulus may even be followed by direct consequences of an unpleasant kind. Traders in general are not guided by far-seeing views, but rather by the immediate balance of supply and demand : the Exposition has created an extraordinary demand, and traders will very extensively have launched out into proportionate ac- tivities; they have gone to excesses in cultivating a plethora of stock, they have committed debaucheries in decorations and shop- fronts ; it is to be feared that in too many cases they will not have distinguished between this immense burst of a transitory demand and a permanent increase of their trade. But the retrospective creditor will renew the distinction which they have forgotten ; the over-excitement of stimulus will be succeeded by exhaustion ; and prosperity, which is so intoxicated today, will awake to sobriety and a headache on the morrow. These are considerations which the gay statistics of the Morning Chronicle do not controvert, and it is well to bear them in mind. Sound economy can put no trust in a prosperity based on a transient excess of railwaypassenger traffic, or the temporary, extortions of inns and lodg,inghouses du- ring the gigantic gala of the World's Fair.
Previous page
